Translucent

by Beardsley, Nathaniel

  She’d thought initially that it would be hard to keep up with the Sandman, but she soon found that it turned out to be rather easy, since he walked at an exceedingly slow pace. She wasn’t sure why he would do this, when he could easily just teleport there and take her with him if she wished. She supposed it was just to drag it out longer, just like everything in her life had been dragged on longer. It was ridiculous, frankly, but she didn’t complain, mostly because she was too weak to.

  They walked through the woods for a very long time, and it seemed like they weren’t getting anywhere. There was nothing to mark how far they had gone, just endless trees that constantly grew up around them. There was nothing to mark the passing of time either, because after what seemed like the time where it should change to day, dawn didn’t make the slightest sign of breaking. There wasn’t even the most infinitesimal change of color in the sky, jus the ever-present darkness and the slim moon, casting eerie shadows throughout the forest.

  Karena knew that she wouldn’t be able to go on for much longer in the condition she was in. She was starving, and even worse, she hadn’t had any water for days. Her throat felt like it was going to explode if she didn’t get water soon. There was hardly any saliva left in her throat, and the saliva that there was she sloshed around in her pasty mouth. Karena tried drinking it, but found that it provided no sustenance whatsoever and only seemed to make the feeling worse.

  After an eternity and a day, they came into a large clearing in the forest. Karena’s eyes were still bleary, but they were clearing slightly, and so she was able to see some of the things in the moonlit expanse of ground that lay before her. It appeared to be abandoned, but not in the way everything else in the world was abandoned. It was abandoned in the way the cottage had been, for a long time. Except instead of a quaint little cottage before her, there was intertwining steel, metal, and concrete. They rose up high so that it was obvious that they had once been buildings, though of what city Karena had no idea. She had never really left the city she’d lived in her whole life before, and so this whole area was new to her.

  They walked forward into a large concrete square that was broken and cracked in several places to the extent that it was no longer one straight platform but was rather many smaller platforms smashed together in an ugly fashion. She stumbled across it, struggling to keep her balance on the extremely uneven ground. The Sandman, on the other hand, had no trouble, merely walking as if he were on flat ground. Looking closer, Karena saw that when the ground dipped down, he kept walking in the air, and when the ground tilted up, he walked right through it as if it wasn’t even there. It seemed he was merely rubbing in how easy everything was for him.

  They reached what appeared to be a sort of main street, which was equally destroyed and terrible for walking. A few minutes into this, however, the Sandman suddenly stopped abruptly, and Karena nearly crashed into him, something she definitely didn’t want to happen. She backed away and saw that he was staring straight ahead inhumanly, his eyes blank and his hands ramrod beside his body.

  “Hello?” Karena asked. For some reason, the walk had somewhat revived her strength to the extent that she could talk more comfortably than before. “Why’d you just stop all of a sudden?”

  The Sandman didn’t answer, and he didn’t need to. Because all around them suddenly materialized hundreds and hundreds of Sandmen, all identical, and all of them holding the hourglasses. The Sandman that had been guiding her stepped back into the crowd that now surrounded Karena, and in seconds she realized what was happening. Now, in this strange setting, they were finally decided to kill her. This was where it would all end.

  56

  They were all identical in every way. They were almost entirely bones, with a few areas on their bodies where one could see a cluster of veins or muscles. The hourglass was clenched in their right hands, and they all stood with their backs perfectly straight and with equally inscrutable faces. They were everywhere, entirely surrounding her, in the street and in buildings, and on the roofs of the structures. They went as far as the eye could see, a huge crowd spreading into the distance, all the way into the forest at the edge of the clearing of buildings.

  They stretched in a line, and Karena realized that there must have been thousands of them. It was then that she realized that they were all here, all the Sandmen that had taken over the people. That would be what, 7 billion identical copies of the Sandman, all right here in this abandoned area. All right here because of her. And after all, why wouldn’t they be? She was the only reason the Sandman had taken over everyone in the first place.

  “All right, go ahead,” Karena said. “I’m ready. Actually I’ve been ready for quite a long time, so please just finish me off.”

  The Sandmen stood there, staring into the distance.

  “Oh, come on! I’m sick of you just standing there like you always do, holding your stupid hourglasses. Seriously, if you’re going to kill me, just kill me!”

  “We are not going to kill you,” said all the Sandmen at once. Since they were all the same person anyway, this wasn’t a very difficult task. As if anything was a difficult task for him.

  Karena rolled her eyes. “Well, what are you going to do then? Build up my anxiety even more? Keep me prisoner until I go crazy?”

  “Our master will finish you off.”

  “Oh, I see,” Karena said. “Who even is your master anyway? I thought you all were the same person.”

  “Our master is the one of us who controls all the others. We are all him.”

  “Then what makes him your master anyway if you’re all him?”

  “Because he controls all of us.”

  “You already said that. Can you just show me your master already?”

  “You must wait.”

  “I’ve been waiting for a long time, ok! I want to know what this is all about. You killed Shawn and now you’re going to kill me.”

  “We did not kill him.”

  Karena heart began to race. They didn’t kill him. They’d dragged him away, but they hadn’t killed him. Karena hadn’t even considered that to be an option. Could it be true? Was he not dead after all? Was there a motive for her to keep on living? “Where is he?” she asked. “What have you done to him?”

  The Sandmen made no reply, but instead began moving apart from each other in an area directly in front of Karena, forming a path through them. Karena knew what this meant. Not knowing where the sudden burst of strength came from, she burst forward, running into the passage formed by the Sandmen. Shawn was going to be through there, and they were actually going to let her see him. Thrilled with ecstasy from this new turn of events, she found herself not even having to even force her starved body to run, being able to run just from the excitement of being able to see Shawn again.

  There was a clearing up ahead, and Karena hoped against hopes that this was where Shawn was. When she reached the clearing, she saw that it was about the same size as the one she’d been in before, with about the same amount of space on the inside, except in the center of this clearing there was a rock, and on that rock was the one person who had given her hope throughout her entire experience in her many lives. Shawn.

  57

  “Shawn!” Karena cried. She ran right up to the rock he was sitting on, and pulled him into an embrace.

  “Hey, Karena,” he said. Karena had expected his voice to be weak and faint, but instead he sounded strong, stronger than ever before. Pulling back, she could see that he even looked fine, and from his facial expression it was clear that nothing bad had been done to him. But Karena couldn’t believe that.

  “What did they do to you?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “They didn’t kill me; they didn’t even hurt me.”

  Karena looked around at all the Sandmen, who were standing as motionless and ramrod straight as ever before. “Then what’s this all about?” she asked. She wasn’t going to just accept that this wasn’t actually an attempt to murder them both. After all this,
it had been made fairly obvious.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But Karena, I want to ask you something. We’ve known each other for a long time. We’ve always talked to each other and relied on each other for support in these terrible times. But I want to know, did I really give you hope? Did I really help give you the courage to go on?”

  “Yes,” Karena said, incredulous at why he was asking such a question now. Was it because he thought they were about to die?

  Shawn smiled. “Good, that’s what I wanted to hear.”

  Karena smiled too, weakly. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  For a moment, Karena seemed to forget about all the trouble around them and all the skeletal figures standing there, motionless. It was a happy moment, a moment full of hope. It was also a short moment.

  Shawn stood up, brushed himself off, and hopped down from the rock. He appeared to be quite content, a reaction Karena wouldn’t expect one to have in a situation such as this.

  “We need to get out of here,” Karena said. She hadn’t cared about surviving this before, but now that she knew that Shawn was alive, she had a whole new reason to continue.

  At this, Shawn laughed. “Look around you,” he said. “There are billions and billions of Sandmen. We aren’t going anywhere.”

  That was Shawn, always being rational. Karena was overjoyed to see that it was really him, that this wasn’t some sort of a ruse. But she did have a look around her, and she knew that Shawn was right. There was no way they could get out of here with all of them covering every available surface in sight. They were to be killed after all. Looking back at Shawn, he still looked calm, as if nothing alarming was going on.

  “Why aren’t you worried?” Karena asked.

  “Why should I be?”

  “What do you mean why should you be? We’re about to be killed by a bunch of Sandmen. You always panicked when you saw him before. You always were unable to remain calm, and now that we’re surrounded by 7 billion of them you aren’t worried at all!”

  “We’re not about to be killed.” Shawn looked confident as he said this.

  Karena looked around and then leaned in close. “Why? Do you have a plan?”

  Shawn laughed again at this. “A plan? Technically, yes, I have a plan. But not the sort of plan you’re thinking of.”

  “As long as it gets us out of here I’m fine. Or as long as it had the tiniest infinitesimal chance of us getting out of here it’s fine.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Well then how is it a plan that will benefit us?”

  Shawn’s smile grew. Karena was beginning to feel confused. What was this plan of Shawn’s? Why was he seemingly so happy with it? She had to admit that Shawn was acting a little strange. But then again, perhaps he just really knew what he was doing, and decided that it would be better not to tell her just then.

  “You know that everyone on earth is the Sandman,” he said.

  “Yes,” Karena replied. “We’ve been through this already.”

  “And you know that you can’t trust anybody.”

  “Yes, I know. That’s why I’ve always been wary of people, because I knew they weren’t real. Sure, I tried to save my parents one time, but that was mostly because I wanted to change the course of events in my personal timeline, like you suggested I do.”

  “And you were very good at not trusting anyone, except for one mistake you made. You trusted me.”

  Karena was silent. What had Shawn just said? “Why is it a mistake to trust you, Shawn? What are you talking about?”

  “Everyone on the earth is the Sandman. Well, I’m sorry to say Karena, that I was never real either. Well, I was, but Shawn wasn’t. I was the Sandman the whole time, just like everyone else.”

  When one just finds out a piece of information that it both disturbing and shocking, and that will change the course of their lives even, it is usually described as being similar to being hit by a brick in the head, or having a bomb explode in you. But those are not accurate analogies at all. Actually, it is more like having a terrible infection grow inside you very slowly, and by the time you are actually willing to believe that you have it, it is too late, and the damage has been done. That was what Karena felt like hearing what Shawn was saying. She couldn’t believe him, and yet it was somehow true. The damage had been done.

  She shook her head slowly as she began to understand what Shawn was saying. “No,” she said, almost a whisper. “No, I don’t believe it. It’s not possible.”

  “But of course it’s possible. You know that anything is possible for the Sandman. And now I should explain what I said about my plan. We aren’t going to be killed. We aren’t going to escape. You are going to be killed. And you won’t escape.”

  58

  Karena’s mind reeled faster than a gyroscope, and far more painfully. She wasn’t going to believe what Shawn had just said. He was still Shawn; the same Shawn she’d known all her life. They’d…they’d tortured him, that was it. They’d forced him to say all this just to make her anxiety greater. It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true. There was no way. She filled her mind with reasons why is couldn’t be true.

  “Think deeply, Karena,” said Shawn. “You know that it’s true. You’ve known it all along, in your subconscious. Only now is it being revealed to you and only now are you consciously aware of it.”

  Karena wanted to ignore him, to block out all that he was saying, but she found that she could not help doing what he’d said, thinking deeply into her past. And she knew that it was true. Shawn had never been real. Shawn had been the Sandman all along, just like the rest of them.

  “No!” she screamed inside her mind, cutting off what she’d been thinking. She wasn’t going to accept what he was saying. Never in a million years. They could torture her forever and she still wouldn’t believe it.

  And yet the voice that told her it was true continued to grow stronger and stronger until it was nearly overpowering. The other voice was losing its power; it didn’t have as much ground to stand on. Weakly, it tried to make comebacks, but it was failing. It was a tremendous battle in her brain, and the voice that said it was true won in the end. Karena fell on the ground, clutching her head as if the truth were physically hurting it. And mentally it was tortuous, like her head had become a dead weight that was pulling her to the ground. Emotions filled her head to the point that it was impossible to think, impossible to even see through her eyes, which she realized were filled with tears. Shawn was alive, and now Shawn had betrayed her.

  Shawn, though he was really the Sandman, watched all this, smiling. “And that’s not half of it,” he said. “I’m not just one of the Sandman’s many clones. I am the original, the one who you always saw in your dreams. I am the one who all these clones were made from. I am the master Sandman.”

  “No!” Karena screamed, raising her head of the floor desperately.

  “Yes. But I think you’ve had enough of this, would you not agree? Tell me, should I go ahead and kill you now, or shall I wait until your mind fully comes to terms with what has just happened?”

  Karena did not reply. She was back on the floor, clutching her head, trying to press into her ears so that she couldn’t hear what he was saying. But no matter how hard she pressed, his voice was always louder. She didn’t want to talk to him, or answer his question, or ever see any sign of him ever again.

  “You didn’t answer,” he pressed on. “Tell me your answer.”

  Karena let go of her ears, finding that it was pointless. And she raised her head and glared straight into his young, toddler eyes. Eyes that would look innocent on anyone else in that body. “I hate you,” she spat.

  “Good, that’s just the result I had hoped for. Now, will you please answer my question?”

  “Just go ahead and do it,” she said. She looked away from Shawn, and so she couldn’t see his facial expression, but she was sure that he was smiling.

  “Great,” he said. “And don’t worry
. This will be entirely painless and once it is over you will find yourself in a better place than this one.”

  Karena continued to look away. “Never will I talk to you.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing you don’t have to.”

  And suddenly, Shawn was right in front of her. Shawn suddenly had a burst in size, and his limbs and torso stretched out right before Karena’s eyes. His face deformed, as did the rest of his body, and in seconds it was the Sandman standing before her. Shawn was gone forever. The last memory of him, the last hope that maybe he’d been there all along, that maybe he was lying when he’d said he was the Sandman, was vanquished. All that remained now was the Sandman standing before her.

  “I said go ahead, already,” Karena said, looking away.

  Nothing was said. Karena expected to feel something happen, to have herself killed in some way, but nothing happened. There was no change in anything. Karena waited for a while, but still she was not killed. Time seemed to drag on, taking longer than it ever had before to pass.

  Finally, she glanced up at him. He was still standing there, motionless. And then, as if he had been waiting for her to look at him, he reached into the pocket of his practically see-through clothes and pulled out the hourglass. Simultaneously, all the other Sandmen mimicked his movements. They reached their long, bony fingers up to the glasses. Karena shut her eyes again, knowing what was coming, what sound she would be hearing next.

  Clink. Clink. Clink.

  Violet swirled around her. She hadn’t opened her eyes, and yet somehow they were open and she could see the vortex swirling around her. The destroyed city had disappeared, and so had all the Sandmen. Was this how they were going to kill her? This was exactly like what had happened all those times before. What was going on?

  And then, darkness.